Patience Worth
by Jammie-Bro
Summary: Mysterious clues are left, and when Ron and Harry investigate they find Hermione's twin sister! PLEASE R+R!!


English SATs Practice Writing paper  
  
Patience Worth  
Hermione woke up with a start. The room was dark, and a freezing chill ran up her spine like the fingers of fear himself. The windows had been flung open, and the curtains were blowing around like there was no tomorrow. As she rubbed her eyes and sat up, another chill flew down her back, but this time traveled all the way down to her toes. The girl was instantly put on edge. A lamp was lit, and she was aware that the other 3 girls in her dorm had been woken up, too. Suddenly, there was a loud scream. The tension was still there, but hermione found herself able to move over to the screaming Lavender in hope of quietening her down. The shrieking girl was holding the newly lit lamp with such a grip that could easily strangle a hippogriff, and was pointing at the wall beside the window. There, written in luminous blue was;  
  
"Rest, weary heart. Let only sunshine light the shrine within. A single ray shall filter through and warm the frozen soul."  
  
Hermione shot Lavender a withering look. "The message isn't exactly terrifying, Lavender." The screaming girl shut up at that comment. "It wasn't that!" She cried, still shaking, "There was someone standing, just looking at me! Then they jumped out of the window!" Hermione raised an eyebrow at her in doubt. Parvarti moved over to Lavender and comforted her, then glared at Herman. "Sometimes you can be so heartless." She muttered. Hermione opened her mouth to protest, when the door banged open. Harry, Ron and Seamus rushed in, wands drawn. All three were in pajamas, Harry's glasses were on wonky and Ron's hair was sticking up all over the place. "What's wrong?" Harry asked with concern. "There was someone here, they wrote on the wall, scared Lavender and left through the window." Parvati replied. Ron and Seamus wandered over to the group of girls, and examined the message on the wall, while Harry stuck his head out of the window. "Frozen soul?" Ron commented, gesturing towards the daubed wall, apparently unimpressed. "Hey Hermione, I think it's talking about you!" "Oh shutup." Hermione snapped, elbowing him in the ribs. "I don't get it," Seamus said, "It doesn't make ANY sense. Why would someone make the effort of coming up here and writing pure nonsense on the walls?" Six heads shook at him; they couldn't make a head or tail of it either. "Well, there's no-one out there." Harry concluded, closing the windows. "Nothing to do now but go back to bed." * * *  
  
The next few days went on without great incident, everything seemed to be back to normal. It was the satisfying lull after a weird mini-storm. Nobody understood the message; it was like a kind of poetry gone wrong, a phrase very out of place.  
  
One particularly wet and dark Thursday, Harry and Ron wearily sat in 'dreaded Divinations' (as Hermione called it). Professor Trelawney was, as ever, enthusiastic about predicting Harry's death. "Oh, I see dark events on your horizon." She moaned, and without a break from the norm, Lavender and Parvati hung on every word she said. "Dark, dark things! And then.. Oh dear. A dark abrupt end." Harry exhaled heavily. Ron rolled his eyes. "It wouldn't be right if she didn't do this every year, I suppose." Harry groaned, when the voluptuous woman finally moved away to make someone else suffer. "Call it tradition." Ron replied in the same tone. Suddenly a loud THUMP shook the tower. Professor Trelawney had collapsed on the floor in a heap. The class turned, gaping; Ron and a few others burst out laughing. The rest of the room was silent. Nobody knew what to do; some turned back to their work, convinced this was another thing that the professor usually does. Lavender and Parvati looked daggers at Ron until the room finally fell totally silent, numerous boys still shaking in soundless laughter.  
  
"She has come back, out of the heart of the girl herself." Professor Trelawney spoke, no emotion in her voice, her eyes glazed, emptily staring at the ceiling. "The Venus in the sky will remain there, be not fooled; the other half is inside, released by loneliness and returned by love." And with that, she woke up, blinking a few too many times and rubbing her head. The class left feeling that she'd attended too many poetry classes.  
  
The great hall buzzed with chatter at dinner that evening. "I told you she was a nutter." Hermione said simply when the two boys told her about the Professors 'funny turn'. "You two really should take Arithmacy, it's dead easy." She pointed out, reaching for a bread roll. "Too late now, we've got out O.W.Ls coming up in a few months." Ron mumbled, stirring his soup intentively. "I tell you, it was right weird, she went on about this 'Venus in the sky'." Hermione dropped her bread roll. It fell sloppily into her vegetable soup.  
  
"What. what did you say?" she whispered, as if her ears didn't obey her. The girl had turned a deathly pale. "A..ur.. Venus in the sky. why? What's wrong?" Ron asked, finally noticing hermione's colour. "Oh. ur.nothing, nevermind, I.. um." She trailed, staring into her soup, refusing to meet Ron or Harry's eyes for the rest of the meal. She then excused herself and went off in the direction of the Library.  
  
After eating a very satisfying meal the two boys left the great hall, but still the feeling of unease at Hermione's behavior was very much present in their stomachs. As they made their way up to the common room, Harry spotted an unusual staircase. "I've never seen that staircase before." He said, pointing it out to his red-haired friend. "We've got ages until we have to back at Gryffindor tower." He replied, "We might as well go and check it out." After climbing the staircase up to the highest floor, an exceptionally wide corridor stretched out in front of them, and at the very end was a blank wall, daubed on very much like the girl's dormitory. Yet, this time the painted letters read;  
  
"Dust rests beneath, and webs lie caught among the briars. A single jewel gleams as a mirrored vision of rising Venus in a mountain lake."  
  
The two teens wandered towards it, wondering what it meant. It was as clear as walking through mud, and did not shed any light on either of the two messages. There was a strange smell hanging in the air, like musty flowers. Every step they took was echoed in crunches, and to their surprise, broken ice littered the floor. "Ow! Bloody hell!!" Harry turned, to see his companion massaging his head. (I knew he was tall, but not that tall!) Ron had seemed to bump his head on the ceiling, but at closer inspection is turned out to be a trapdoor. The two heaved it open, and immediately had to jump backwards because an old, heavy picture frame accompanied it. Harry and Ron stared at the framed painting, which looked centuries old. It showed a teenage girl, with dark, chestnut brown hair, gazing out of an attic window, eaves of a castle surrounding her. She shockingly resembled Hermione. "My god, she's a stunner." Ron commented breathlessly. Harry was lost for words. "I wonder what's up there." He went on, pointing into the darkness beyond the trapdoor. Harry finally found his voice. "Well, let's go find out."  
  
Meanwhile, unknown to the two boys, Hermione had noticed the absense of her two best friends when she returned to the common room, and set out after them. She was descending the stairs, heading to Hagrids' hut when an unusual staircase caught her eye.  
  
After a short scuffle to get both 15 year olds up through the stunted trapdoor, (and a lot of swearing on Ron's part) Harry and Ron found themselves in a strangely lit room. The walls were slightly slanted, and were covered in brightly coloured paintings. The two gasped. The paintings were obviously recent. Lifesize portraits of themselves smiled out at them, along with hermione, Viktor Krum, Fluer Delacour, Cedric Diggory, Buckbeak, and, to Harry's shock, Sirius. Not an inch of wall was left blank; Giant chess pieces littered the walls, flames of different colours crawling the height of the ceiling. "Who.who could have done this?" Harry asked. "No-one knows what Sirius looks like except us! What if someone else knows about him, and Buckbeak too? Is this some form of blackmail?" Ron shook his head in reply. "I don't know, I just don't know." The room was deceiving; the two couldn't seem to find a door. Finally Harry discovered a hanging, shabby piece of material, which concealed the doorway to a tiny attic. In it sat a girl, seemingly motionless, in a blue gown. She was gazing out of a minute window. "Harry," Ron exclaimed, elbowing him in the ribs, "it's the girl from the painting!"  
  
The girl turned, as if awakened from a deep sleep, and smiled at them. She seemed the mirror image of hermione, with the exception of darker hair and tanned skin. She was wearing Hermione's blue dress robe, and a large sapphire hung around her neck, silver wings dawning either side. "You finally made it." She said calmly, "I've been waiting." Ron stood gawping. "Who are you?" Harry asked. "You look just like Hermione." The girl smiled again. "That's because I'm her twin sister, Jaime."  
  
~*~*~  
  
Author's notes: Ooh! Cliffhanger! Sorry, this was originally meant to be the second chapter of "A little out of the ordinary" but it had too much plot, really. "A little out of the ordinary" is just R/H fluff, and this hasn't got much fluff in until the next chappie, so stay tuned! Please R+R!!! Hope you enjoyed it! Any flamers go to Jammie_Bro@Hotmail.com, and basically anything you don't want to say in a review.^-^ 


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